MSc China and Globalisation Summer Reading List

 

While you are not formally required to read anything before the start of your course, we recommend that you try some of these readings over the summer. Sample a few of the books that look interesting to you. This will help you to prepare for the course and get used to the reading load that will be expected of you.

Kerry Brown. 2026. Mao: A Study in Power and Contradiction. London: Reaktion

Barbara Finamore. 2018. Will China Save the Planet? Cambridge. Polity.

Arthur R. Kroeber. 2020. China's Economy : What Everyone Needs to Know. New York: Oxford University Press.

Ching Kwan Lee. 2017. The Specter of Global China: Politics, Labor, and Foreign Investment in Africa. Chicago: Chicago University Press.

Yifei Li and Judith Shapiro.2020. China Goes Green: Coercive Environmentalism for a Troubled Planet. Cambridge: Polity

Kenneth Lieberthal. 2004. Governing China: From Revolution to Reform. London: W.W.Norton & Co.

Barry Naughton 2018. The Chinese Economy: Adaptation and Growth. Cambridge, Massachusetts, The MIT Press.

Tony Saich. 2011. Governance and Politics of China. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan.

Steve Tsang and Olivia Cheung. 2024. The Political Thought of Xi Jinping. New York: Oxford University Press.

Dan Wang 2025. Breakneck: China’s Quest to Engineer the Future. London: Allen Lane

Yan Yunxiang 2003. Private Life Under Socialism: Love, Intimacy, and Family Change in a Chinese Village, 1949-1999.